in darkness
by She's a Star
Summary: She remembers now, trapped somewhere outside time and light and without anything but to remember.' Spoilers for the end of season four.


**in**** darkness**

_by__ She's a Star_

**Disclaimer:** Alias is JJ's.

**Author's Note:** Irina fic, set during the time Elena held her captive. Poor SpyMommy.

* * *

The first man Irina had killed had made the mistake of catching her eye. She'd shot him twice; first, faltering, in the chest, missing the heart. He'd remained nearly silent but the shallow, uneven breaths he drew suggested a dissonance she knew she was imagining and an agony that could not be ignored or denied. It had been a strange thing; she had received months of training, enduring it with an air that suggested she did not need it at all. Her hand hadn't shaken as she'd fired, and she'd known very clearly in the sole instant after her finger had pressed the trigger that her error had not been unintended. He'd gasped, fallen, and stared up at her, grey eyes lit with bewilderment. Still precise, detached, she'd been able to understand easily why; he'd believed, as fools tended to, that surely a beautiful young woman wasn't capable of wreaking that kind of destruction. That somehow the confirmation that such a thing was possible left him wronged and betrayed. He'd stared up at her, wordless, pathetic, and the weakness had infuriated her. The second time she took no chances, and left a bullet in his skull. 

She remembers now, trapped somewhere outside time and light and without anything but to remember. It is funny or perhaps tragic – her senses are dulling, she can't quite tell the difference – that she can recall the precise shade of this man's eyes, but not Sydney's or Jack's. Not that she is forgetting them – no, she has pieces of things that will stay with her beyond madness, and beyond death, if such a thing is possible. Sydney's smile, her voice holding a touch of childish hope as it awkwardly wraps itself around the word "mom", her fingers pressed against glass, hands the same as Irina's. It hurts to think of it, now; that inability to touch. And then there are other things; blood and ridiculous blue hair and heartbreak too acute to hide. She'd shot her own daughter, torn her husband apart and she does not believe in things like karma but this bears an undeniable resemblance to retribution.

She is dead now, to everyone that matters, and nearly dead to herself. Jack believes that he killed her. She had seen the woman once, the one who had died in her place – Elena had said it seemed fitting that they at least be introduced. This had been months ago, and her mind had been sharper then, clear enough to easily identify certain unmistakable flaws. Her words had been too clipped, her smiles too easy, and at the time Irina had gathered enough from this to find the strength to sit there, regal and unaffected, staring into her own face. Jack knew about the Helix Protocol, and, more importantly, he knew her. He'd studied her intricately when she had first turned herself into the CIA -- searching, no doubt, for some fault that would reveal her true intentions. They'd rebuilt a fragile trust after losing Sydney. Surely, Irina had reasoned, surely he would know almost immediately that this woman was not her.

A week later, Elena had visited her with surveillance photographs.

"You did well with this man, Irina," she'd said, fingers twisting through her sister's hair as though they were still children. "Look at how thoroughly all your betrayals have broken him." And then, alight with girlish intimacy, leaning so close their faces barely brushed – "No wonder he wanted you dead."

Most of the time she can't tell the difference anymore between sleep and her waking hours; they're all plagued with the same afflictions. Aches and emptiness, a kind of solitude that is very different from any other she's known. Occasionally, she will dream of Sydney and Jack. She's never freed from this place entirely – earlier on there had been illusions of serenity, long beaches and air tinged with the lingering traces of yesterday's rain. Now it seems she has lost the ability to so much as think her way out of this place, but sometimes – sometimes she will look up and Sydney will be there, smiling at her, eyes shining with tears. 'I've been looking everywhere,' she'll say, laughing and crying all at once, 'for months and months, and you've been here all along.' Or it will be Jack, silent and avoiding her gaze as he cuts her binds to free her, his fingers cool and certain against her skin. 'You know that I would never . . .' she always begins, not needing to end because the shadowy unspoken sin that she's apparently committed disappears the moment he looks up at her. He will take her hand and kiss it, perhaps, or brush back a lock of her hair; sweet, unimportant gestures that spelled out the years of their marriage before her death. And maybe he is seeing Laura when he looks at her, maybe Irina is fading, has faded into dust, gotten lost in the dirt and stale air and all that's left is the woman he'd cherished and lost. She wakes with her eyes hot and stinging.

Elena has come close to killing her dozens, hundreds, thousands of times. (A number does not seem important. To her, hard facts no longer hold any worth.) She dreads the pain if only because it awakens something in her, ignites her veins and reminds her what it is to feel; that despite everything, she is still alive enough to hurt and to bleed. Her entire life has unintentionally become composed of avoiding death: she has defeated it, fooled it, crafted a perfect impression of it. Now she is ready to meet it, she decides, perfectly ready, but she knows her sister. Irina will not be allowed to die. There is no wrongfully placed vengeance, no satisfaction in letting her slip away so easily. Elena wants her dead, but there is something she wants more.

Patience has come to her sister in their years apart; she has explored and conquered countless different kinds of pain. Soon Irina will break and she will tell her. There is no point in denying this. Her strength is waning; as of right now, it almost seems as though her body will never escape this ache, that her mind will stop bothering altogether to make sense of things. She begins to wish for sleep in hopes of seeing her husband and daughter, though it's not really them, of course. It is only fragments that she herself has crafted and the fact that she knows this perfectly well on one level and still yearns for it so completely strikes in her something almost like disgust. She will not be saved, and that in itself is simple. That in itself she understands.

Sydney had gotten the flu when she was five. It had been around Christmastime; Irina remembers carefully covering her with blankets bearing the faces of then-familiar cartoon characters. Sydney had stared up at her, teary eyed and silent – afraid at having been overtaken against her will. Before then she had always been very healthy. Irina closes her eyes and it seems that her fingertips still burn, that the heat she'd felt as she pressed her hand carefully against Sydney's forehead (to see if her fever had gone up, to brush back her hair, to do one of the thousands of tiny, careless things that mothers do) had never faded. Jack did not come home until dark and Sydney had already fallen into a fitful, delicate sleep. Gently, he picked her up and she barely stirred but didn't open her eyes; he'd smiled at Irina, at Laura, and walked past without a word, protecting a strangely treasured silence. She recalls as though no time has passed at all the image of him disappearing down the hall, his daughter in his arms, the Christmas tree lights dancing in hair and across the sides of faces. In that moment, she had loved them enough that everything else slipped away, unimportant – that somehow she'd even managed to let go of herself without quite noticing that she'd done so. She thinks of it now and is almost envious; how lucky she'd been, to know that kind of peace.

There is an interruption to the darkness.

"Perhaps you have something to tell me today, Irina," Elena says, practically coy, her smile communicating perfectly that she already knows who's won.

Irina remains silent. Perhaps she does.


End file.
